This movie is so faithful to themes of the Austen canon that it is bound to ignite book sales, if not inspire the establishment of copy-cat book clubs.

Starring Maria Bello, Kathy Baker, Hugh Dancy et al. Written and directed by Robin Swicord. Based on the novel by Karen Joy Fowler. 105 minutes. At major theatres. PG

"All Jane Austen all the time!" is the rallying cry for The Jane Austen Book Club – and it's infectious. This movie is so faithful to themes of the Austen canon that it is bound to ignite book sales, if not inspire the establishment of copy-cat book clubs.

No author, except maybe Shakespeare, has inspired so many filmmakers. Yet director and screenwriter Robin Swicord, shows a special talent for interpreting the Austen novels through contemporary situations – without forcing any issues, and possibly better than the Karen Joy Fowler book on which the film is based.

The premise is simple: When lives begin to fall apart in a circle of Sacramento friends and neighbours, a book club becomes a therapeutic distraction. The club's task provides the structure for the film: six Austen novels, six months, six readers, each one assigned to present a novel, from Sense and Sensibility to Persuasion.

From the daily frustrations of urban existence to the deeper discordances of partnerships gone wrong or unfound, each member will find a mirror for his or situation in Austen's fiction.

With subtle, Austen-esque irony, Swicord reveals her characters with the flaws that they themselves are oblivious to.

Jocelyn the dog breeder (Maria Bello) is unaware that she fears relationships because of the potential for the unexpected and uncontrollable. "You just want to be obeyed. That's why you have dogs," says Grigg (Hugh Dancy), who meets her in a hotel elevator. He knows nothing about Austen, and very little about the mating habits of older women.

Bello thinks of herself as a matchmaker, like Austen's Emma Woodhouse, and she lures Grigg into the book club thinking him a fine younger man date her friend Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), who has just been dumped by her husband of more than 20 years, Daniel (Jimmy Smits). It was Jocelyn who originally set them up as a couple.

Sylvia is so devastated by Daniel's departure for another woman that she can't see she holds the key to a renewal rather than an end to their marriage. Daniel can't see that he needs his family more than he needs a new partner.

High school French teacher Prudie (an incredibly prim Emily Blunt) is blind to the fact that she's the immature partner in her marriage to Dean (Marc Blucas). She is still nursing wounds incurred in high school and unable to acknowledge the love she actually feels for her mother.

Prudie also lacks any awareness of her own intellectual snobbery, which Sylvia's daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), a lesbian free spirit, is quick to puncture. Allegra, in Austen's terms driven more by sensibility than sense, can't stop falling in love at first sight and is badly burned by what she fails to see in a predatory partner.

As for 60-something, six times married Bernadette (Kathy Baker), she is the one character untinged by irony. She's there for the others, and represents the belief in marriage as the basis for necessary community ties that underlies all of Austen's novels.

The script might have slipped into caricature, as often the adaptations of Austen's novels have, but Swicord opts for characters in whom we might see ourselves.

Even Prudie's mother Sky, an aging, pot-smoking hippie played by Lynn Redgrave, offers room for our sympathy, although she might be every bit as embarrassing as Austen's Mrs. Bennet.

It would be very un-Austen-like for this movie to end without happy resolutions all around, but unlike the chick-lit fare that has inspired so much recent romantic comedy, The Jane Austen Book Club doesn't get glib about it.

Just as Austen would have said of her own characters, these women and men face real troubles and in overcoming them grow into better, or at least more interesting, people.

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